Lawmaker questions timing of pension proposal and whether it will face changes under Hong Kong’s next government
Wong Kwok-kin calls decision problematic while No 2 official insists there have been discussions between incoming and outgoing governments
A pro-Beijing lawmaker who will join Hong Kong’s next Executive Council on July 1 has questioned whether the outgoing city leader’s proposal to scrap a pension offsetting mechanism will actually be implemented under the new administration.
“We don’t know what the incoming government will think at this moment,” Wong Kwok-kin of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions said on a RTHK radio programme on Saturday morning. He noted incoming leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor had earlier said she would scrap the mechanism.
The No 2 official Matthew Cheung Kin-chung who will remain in the role after June 30, said on Saturday that Lam is familiar with the Mandatory Provident Fund [MPF] offsetting arrangements – a controversial arrangement that allows bosses to claw back their contributions into workers’ pension funds to cover severance and long-service payments – and that there has been communication between the outgoing and incoming governments.
“The only benefit of the proposal is that it clearly scraps the offset mechanism. But this decision is problematic,” said Wong. “There have been long arguments in the Labour Advisory Tribunal and there is no consensus. This government made this announcement just before Leung [Chun-ying] leaves office, but it will be the next administration that will have to implement it. Will there be changes?”
